Brazilian artist Cinthia Marcelle received the Main Prize of the Future Generation Art Prize 2010 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation

Cinthia Marcelle, a Brazilian artist who makes films, photographs and installations, is the winner of the first Future Generation Art Prize. Cinthia will receive $60,000 in cash and $40,000 to be invested in the production of new work.

The winner of the Main Prize was selected and announced by the international jury consisting of Daniel Birnbaum (Sweden), Okwui Enwezor (Nigeria), Yuko Hasegawa (Japan), Ivo Mesquita (Brazil), Eckhard Schneider (Germany), Robert Storr (USA) and Ai Weiwei (China) at the award ceremony in Kiev, Ukraine, on Friday, December 10.

Daniel Birnbaum, the Chairman of the Jury: “With a keen sense of scale and sculptural impact Cinthia Marcelles beautifully composed film’s capture the viewer immediately. Her visually powerful works in the exhibition impressed the jury through their visual economy and rigorous form. We congratulate her to her successful synthesis of choreography, landscape and performance”.

Cinthia Marcelle, artist (Brazil), the Winner of the Main Prize: “I am really surprised to be here. It was a long trip to get to Kiev. I would like to thank the audience. It’s nice to know that people of all over the world have seen my works. It’s a really nice experience. And talking about what I am going to do with the money I received the main plan is to keep experimenting, researching and having time to develop new projects”.

The Mentor Artists of the Prize, including Andreas Gursky, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami, arrived to Kyiv especially to celebrate the Prize. For the very first time all these outstanding artists were on the stage together.

Jeff Koons: “You can see that the young artists are really making wonderful work and it’s always a universal vocabulary. And it’s tremendous that everybody now is here in Ukraine, in Kiev. And it can be a focal point for this activity. Art is absolutely universal and it can happen anywhere. It just wants to be involved and people to be communicating”.

“I am proud to stand on this stage together with some of the greatest artists of our days, and to be in the same room with the greatest visionaries of the contemporary world,” said Mr. Victor Pinchuk, the creator of the Future Generation Art Prize during the Award Ceremony. “It’s a great honor for my country to have all these people here tonight. I also would like to address to the young artists – this is just the beginning and you need to know that the world needs your success. And these special guests are here tonight to inspire you. You have to remember this day for all your life.”

Among others, the special guests of the Ceremony included members of the International Board of the Future Generation Art Prize Richard Armstrong (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum); Alfred Pacquement (Musée nationale d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou); Miuccia Prada (founder of Prada Foundation) and Sir Nicholas Serota (Tate, Great Britain).

Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, (UK): “I think most of the prizes divided by national terms rather by international. Most of the international art awards are made as life time awards to the much older artists. So the Future Generation Art Prize we were celebrating today is really the one that recognizes that the world has changed very dramatically in the last twenty years. So we have to look not just to the North up Europe, North up America, but across the whole world. And you’ve seen in the range of artists and even in the range of jurors and selectors it’s a very different world from the world we knew before. So I think this prize will immediately capture enormous interest in the art world”.

Mircea Nicolae, the artist from Romania, received the Special Prize according to the decision of the Jury. $20,000 from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation will be allotted to fund artist-in-residency program supporting the further development of the artist.

Robert Storr: “With disarming even deceptive simplicity Mircea Nicolae tells a complex multi-leveled tale of the coming together and coming apart of his family against the background of the coming together and coming apart of socialism in Romania after the second world war. Using documentary film footage, snapshots, architectural photos, his mother’s shoes and pictures and models of vernacular kiosks of modernist design, he gives us moving as well as critical images and symbols of the interweaving or private life and history, the personal and political”.

Following by the open, free and democratic application procedure via Internet the seven members of the Selection Committee, competent and global art-professionals, selected 20 artists from more than 6 000 applications coming from 125 countries and divided over all continents. The 21th nominee is Artem Volokytin, the winner of the first PinchukArtCentre Prize 2009, a contemporary art prize awarded to young Ukrainian artists under 35.

Public has the chance to vote via the Internet for the “People’s Choice Prize” on the PinchukArtCentre website. This prize will be awarded at the end of the exhibition. It is not a cash award and serves as a symbol of recognition of the audience.

Established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation this unique biannual artist-focused prize aims to discover and provide long-term support for a generation of emerging artists, wherever they may live and work as well as to make a major contribution toward the production of new work by young artists. It is an important contribution to the participation of younger artists in the dynamic cultural development of societies in global transition.